chaosskill/plu_toulouse

PLU Toulouse — Zoning, Protected Nature & Development Zones

Filtered, cleaned extract of Toulouse's Plan Local d'Urbanisme (PLU) — the official zoning/urban-planning document that governs what can be built where in the city — covering future-development zones, protected-nature zones, and investor-relevant planning zones (ZAC, OAP, social-housing quotas, airport noise perimeter, city preemption rights).

• 3 files, 1,177 polygons total
• Polygon / MultiPolygon geometry (WGS84 / EPSG:4326 — [longitude, latitude])
• Format: GeoJSON FeatureCollection
• Geographic scope: Toulouse city limits only (INSEE commune 31555)
• Source revision date: 2025-04-10

Why this exists

The official PLU is published as a set of ~10 Shapefiles with 80+ raw administrative columns, in Lambert-93 projection, split across zone_urba, info_surf, prescription_surf and other generically-named layers that don't map cleanly to "what does this zone actually mean for me." This extract picks out the zone types that actually matter for someone evaluating a neighborhood — where you can't build (protected nature), where big change is coming (future development, ZAC), and where extra rules apply (social housing quotas, airport noise, city preemption rights) — reprojects them to standard lon/lat, and labels each with a plain-language description.

Files

plu_au.geojson — 10 features

Zones "à urbaniser" (AU) — currently non-urbanized land designated for future housing or development. Two sub-types: AUc (conditional) and AUs (strict, more construction-limited).

plu_nature.geojson — 1,069 features

Protected natural/green zones, two types:

• EBC (Espace Boisé Classé) — 931 features — protected woodland where construction is entirely prohibited.
• EVP (Espace Vert à Protéger) — 138 features — protected green space under the PLU (includes a small subset also flagged for cultural/historical/architectural landscape value).

plu_investor.geojson — 98 features

Zones relevant to development/investment decisions, five types:

• ZAC (Zone d'Aménagement Concerté) — 13 features — active planned urban development projects.
• OAP (Orientation d'Aménagement et de Programmation) — 24 features — priority zones for urban transformation.
• PEB (Plan d'Exposition au Bruit) — 10 features — Toulouse-Blagnac airport noise exposure perimeter.
• SPL (mixité sociale) — 27 features — zones with a mandatory social-housing quota on new housing programs.
• DPUR (Droit de Préemption Urbain Renforcé) — 24 features — zones where the city has reinforced first-right-of-purchase ahead of any private buyer.

Common fields (all 3 files)

Every feature has type (short code, e.g. "EBC", "ZAC"), label (short display name), and desc (plain-language description). plu_nature.geojson and plu_investor.geojson also carry name (the official PLU terminology). plu_au.geojson additionally carries typezone (AUc/AUs) and libelle (the raw PLU zone code from the source shapefile, e.g. "AU0", "1AUIC"). See DATA_DICTIONARY.md for the full field-by-field breakdown.

Known limitations

• Not the full PLU. Toulouse's PLU also defines ~800 general urban zones (U — simple "buildable" zones) and agricultural zones (A) that are intentionally excluded here — they're numerous, low-signal on their own, and not the zones people actually want to check for. This package covers the zones that carry a specific constraint or opportunity, not blanket buildability.
• Coordinates were reprojected from the source's native Lambert-93 (EPSG:2154) to WGS84. Reprojection was applied on the geometry only — verified against the source shapefile's stated CRS in its metadata. If you need the original Lambert-93 coordinates for French cadastral work, they're recoverable via a forward reprojection (EPSG:4326 → EPSG:2154).
• PLUs are revised periodically. This snapshot reflects the 2025-04-10 revision. Toulouse Métropole may have since adopted amendments — check the official Géoportail de l'Urbanisme document for the current version before using this for a real transaction decision.
• Text fields (label/name/desc) were fixed for a character-encoding bug found during packaging (double UTF-8/Windows-1252 round-trip corruption affecting plu_nature.geojson and plu_investor.geojson) — already corrected in these files.

License & attribution

Source: Plan Local d'Urbanisme (PLU) de la commune de TOULOUSE, published by Toulouse Métropole via the national Géoportail de l'Urbanisme (GPU) — https://www.geoportail-urbanisme.gouv.fr/document/31555_PLU_20250410, revision 2025-04-10. GPU planning documents are published as open data under the Licence Ouverte / Open Licence 2.0 (Etalab). Reuse, including commercial reuse, is permitted with attribution to Toulouse Métropole as the original data producer. This extract adds filtering, field selection, and reprojection on top of that public data.

Suggested uses

• Overlay on a neighborhood map to flag "can't build here" (EBC) vs. "big change coming" (ZAC, AU) zones before buying or renting
• Investor due diligence: cross-reference a parcel against DPUR (city can outbid you) or PEB (airport noise) before committing
• Combine with cadastral parcels for a "development risk/opportunity" layer
• Urban planning research: track protected green space coverage or planned social-housing distribution across the city

About La Ville Rose

This extract was built for lavillerose.com, a free interactive map of Toulouse that helps five kinds of people — families, students, companies, property investors, and seniors — find the right neighborhood for their specific situation. Instead of one generic map, each persona gets its own layer set: investors see PLU zoning risk and price trends, families see schools/noise/safety, companies see foot traffic and business density, and so on. All the underlying data (this PLU extract included) comes from public open-data sources, cleaned and joined into something usable on a map.

• Map: lavillerose.com — pick a persona, explore ~15 data layers per profile for free, no signup. The investor persona is where this PLU data is used live.
• Guides & reports: guide.lavillerose.com — per-neighborhood guides, plus paid detailed/custom reports for anyone who wants a specific recommendation rather than exploring themselves.

This PLU extract is one dataset in a series of open Toulouse layers (business registry, transport, schools, noise, green space, etc.) released alongside the map. A paid, cadastral-section-level dataset that merges this and other domains into per-neighborhood scores is available on the same site for anyone who needs the cross-domain join rather than the raw layer.